The short version: We have initiated a project to combine LLResearch.org (the archive website) and Bring4th.org (the community website) into a single website! The reasons and benefits for this are listed below, along with a request for your help. Thank you so much for considering this. It is a pleasure to serve you, and we hope to do so as long as this particular wavelength of light is of aid to the spiritual seeker.
With so much Love, L/L Research : )

The longer version: As many of you have observed firsthand, Bring4th has been steadily building in traffic, participation, and content generation since 2008, bringing us to the point of having to upgrade our hosting environment in order to ensure the forums, chat, blogs, and store can continue to grow and scale without receiving the kind of persistent error messages that many of you endured not too long ago (thanks again for your patience during that period of growing pains!).

LLResearch.org/Bring4th.org Unification Project

July 2013 Proposal

In late 2008, the Bring4th website was created to foster an online community built around the principles of the Law of One and to facilitate connecting spiritual seekers often isolated from one another by geographical distance. Bring4th soon became a successful social networking venue, offering forums, chat rooms, and blogs to the members of the community, and offering the possibilities of making enduring friendships--locally and online--for participating members. For those who desired supporting L/L Research as an organization, an eCommerce store was implemented to raise funds through donations and book sales. For the first time in L/L Research history, Jim and Carla did not have to fund their tiny non-profit organization out of their own pockets due to the small, but sufficient, revenue generated from the store.

LLResearch.org, L/L's first and principal website has been serving as the library or archive. Thanks to Ian J., LLResearch.org has been meticulously maintained and stewarded since the 1990's to provide a completely free, authoritative, and comprehensive repository of nearly all channelings, interviews, speeches, publications, and news for those who wished to contemplate and study the philosophies and principles comprising The Law of One.

Both sites have been managed by L/L Research but have been operating independently of one another.

A new initiative is now underway

The ever increasing volume of traffic and generated content from both websites--Bring4th especially--is causing us to grow into the need for a larger hosting plan offering more robust services. In general, we hope to improve the infrastructure of the websites by bringing together LLResearch.org and Bring4th.org under the same “virtual roof” and hosting both sites on the same server, unifying them into a single website. Among the many other benefits listed below, doing so will save the organization money instead of having to host two independent sites through two separate services. These savings can then be applied to the new hosting environment. (A helpful move because the new web host provider requires additional financial resources due to the burgeoning volume of communications on Bring4th via forum posts, chat logs, blog entries, and data retention from online store activity.)

Help is needed for this large-scale project

We have asked L/L Research's webmaster, Steve E. (aka: Bring4th_Steve), to lead the planning and technical implementation, by designing and reprogramming both websites in order to actualize the internal and community ideas mentioned above. Thus far, Steve has served as L/L Research's webmaster for Bring4th.org – and, as of late 2012, assumed a similar role for LLResearch.org as well – on a strictly volunteer basis, giving both websites his time on top of his day job and family life. More times than can be counted, we receive e-mails from him at all hours of the night as he updates us on new Bring4th developments, fixed issues, and completed maintenance tasks that keep the website running as smoothly as possible for the enjoyment of all.

The size of this particular project is quite large in scope compared to the first Bring4th launch. The time and energy requirements needed are so substantial, that we seek your assistance in helping to support these new development expenses and outside services, while also commissioning Steve to plan, develop, launch, and maintain this new site version.

L/L Research therefore invites you, the readership and community, to assist in two basic ways:

Financial assistance:
Our goal is to raise $3,000 to pay for all hosting-related expenses (bandwidth/storage/hardware/software/3rd-party services), and to extend some support for Steve for the enormous investment of time and energy he will be devoting to this project. Given the increased requirements and scope of the project this time around, Steve happily agreed to provide web development services at a rate far lower than most is standard for web programmers to charge.

Please keep in mind that L/L Research is a 501[c]3 non-profit organization, so donations made this year can be deducted when you file your 2013 taxes. A receipt for your tax records will be snail-mailed to you if the United States, and emailed to you if international.

Feedback:
Please append to this thread your ideas and comments regarding how L/L Research could improve one or both websites, or perhaps share your views on how both sites can best be integrated into a single website.

Help has been offered--and will be graciously considered in the near future--to assist with moving the archive website information into a database-driven content management system. Additional help will be sought on a case-by-case basis depending on which tasks are at hand, and if the tasks can be shared in a way that accelerates progress instead of hindering it.

A more technical summary of proposed changes are as follows:

1) Graphically redesign, and reorganize navigation and instructional content for LLResearch.org and Bring4th.org in a way that best improves the user experience, including:

a.Topically organizing the transcripts in a variety of different ways that give one greater insight into what’s actually in that treasure trove. Its current organization requires accessing year by year and reading main questions that could be the length of paragraphs.

b. Tagging the sessions and entering them into a database to enable greater searching and sorting capacity, and ease of navigation, hopefully yielding search returns much like what Tobey has accomplished at lawofone.info.

2) At an organizational level, consider rebuilding LLResearch.org so that readers gain a greater sense of and access to its mission, more prominent listing of the services it offers and methods to become involved, and select financial summaries to promote compliance and transparency as a 501[c]3.

4) Analyze how well L/L Research is making itself and its information available to others, and consider community feedback for improving the current state of LLResearch.org and Bring4th.org. A main question to be asked: What is working for the community, and what is not? The responses will be synthesized and incorporated into the planning and development of the newly combined site.

5) Restructure the forums and the moderation process to promote greater transparency and greater ease of use.

8) Move Bring4th and LLResearch to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). This will significantly improve the performance and manageability of both web properties. Portions of this task have already been implemented to alleviate recent issues of Bring4th crashing. Hosting with a VPS service increases the amount of time needed to maintain the L/L Research web properties, as these services are no longer managed hosting services, as they once were.

9) By improving the level and availability of server resources to Bring4th and LLResearch.org, the community can expect to enjoy an improved performance from Bring4th with respect to page load times and general “snappiness” in the way the site performs.

10) Further, with the new server and upgrade of the website, multiple staff members of L/L Research will be able to publish content directly to the archive portion of the website, instead of being completely reliant upon the webmaster to do so. This will be a huge boon to organizational efficiency.

11) Topically organize the transcripts in a variety of different ways that give one greater insight into what’s actually in that treasure trove. Its current organization requires accessing year by year and reading main questions that could be the length of paragraphs.

We’ll find ways to tag the sessions putting the transcripts into a database to yield search returns much like Tobey has set up at lawofone.info.

12) Design the website to be read and used easily on mobile and tablet devices.

13) Considering utilizing a system whereby, using your account, you could mark transcripts as “read” and “unread”, perhaps even starring and notating some, to make the archive a better, more personal resource.

14) Upgrade the Bring4th.org code base: Much customization has been implemented into the original code base of Bring4th.org, making it very difficult to upgrade old third-party software, such as the blogging system, online store, and the chat application. Efforts are already underway to begin transforming the old code base into a more compatible environment that allows for interchanging and upgrading third-party software whenever new versions are released.

15) Upgrade the LLResearch.org code base: Create a map of all topic areas and content branches within the website, and determine how to best preserve the original structure of the content while simultaneously formulating a strategy to move the content to a database-driven platform. As an abstraction to the database, a content management system will be implemented to encourage new translations and contributions from different languages around the world. With this added capability comes the significant task of converting the archive site into a multilingual site that can support multiple languages throughout any location within the site. Help will be sought by the community to provide localization (i.e., language translations) of the archive website in languages other than English. Please note, translation tasks are related specifically to site navigation and instruction/usage only, not for translating content.

16) In the future, we can consider using the new framework to formulate an approach to foster better communication through the website for Law of One Study groups around the world. Further, provide a means for L/L to have an official channel of communication for trained groups who wish to contribute content through the Confederation of Planets.[/list]

Project Timeline

At the time of this writing, the calendar is moving into the month of August. The estimated time for planning, designing, prototyping, developing, testing, and launching the newly combined llresearch.org and bring4th.org site is set at four months, making December 1st the "go live" date. This is when a beta version will be made public alongside the current bring4th and llresearch sites. During the month of December, any bugs found will be worked on and resolved, and the site is expected to launch once again on Christmas day, much like Bring4th.org did in 2008.

All work on this project will be done on a part-time basis, and there are no guarantees that the site will hit its exact milestones should unforeseen circumstances get in the way. The estimates are provided by Steve based on his prior experience with Bring4th, as well as his experience to date working on various development projects.

We are very hopeful that some of you will offer new suggestions that can be worked into the new design. We are interested in knowing; which features do you enjoy the most, and which ones do you care the least about? What have you seen elsewhere on the Internet that you think would work well for a spiritually-driven community like Bring4th?

Not all suggestions can be accepted, of course, for the simple reasons that there may be practicality/feasibility issues, technical roadblocks, or certain ideas may not prove popular enough by the majority of the community to justify the time and expense of developing. We will, however, be sure we consider everyone's feedback, and will read this thread while considering the suggestions brought forth through the community. It is you, the community member, who use LLResearch.org and Bring4th on a regular basis, and we trust that many of you may have some great feedback or ideas that could make further enhance everyone's experience.

Here is a link to the store donation page for those who are in a position to help donate at this time:

Please keep in mind that L/L Research is a 501[c]3 non-profit organization, so donations made this year can be deducted when you file your 2013 taxes. A receipt for your tax records will be snail-mailed to you if the United States, and emailed to you if international.

Thank you for any feedback and/or financial assistance offered at this time!

(07-29-2013, 01:19 AM)Bring4th_Admin Wrote: Financial assistance: Our goal is to raise $3,000 to pay for all hosting-related expenses (bandwidth/storage/hardware/software/3rd-party services), and to extend some support for Steve for the enormous investment of time and energy he will be devoting to this project. Given the increased requirements and scope of the project this time around, Steve happily agreed to provide web development services at a deeply discounted rate.

Life on Planet Earth and Olio combined to make a 'General Discussion' section (perhaps with a cleverly worded description or forum section name?). My reasoning on this is that they have extremely similar functionality at the moment and I often have to go digging through both sections to find a post. I also think the Treehuggers Treehouse should be moved to the sub forum of the new General Discussion section to act as an 'off topic' area.

I think an Arts section should be created which would better categorize posts related to poetry, music, painting/drawing, games, movies, and TV shows, etc. At the moment, they seem to be a complete scattershot all over the forums.

(07-29-2013, 11:17 AM)Parsons Wrote: Life on Planet Earth and Olio combined to make a 'General Discussion' section (perhaps with a cleverly worded description or forum section name?). My reasoning on this is that they have extremely similar functionality at the moment and I often have to go digging through both sections to find a post. I also think the Treehuggers Treehouse should be moved to the sub forum of the new General Discussion section to act as an 'off topic' area.

I think an Arts section should be created which would better categorize posts related to poetry, music, painting/drawing, games, movies, and TV shows, etc. At the moment, they seem to be a complete scattershot all over the forums.

A major overhaul of the forum structure is part of the plan. There's no finalized layout for the new forum, but we are planning on taking more advantage of how the forum is split into two sections (right now Bring4th One and Bring4th Two), allowing one section to be more focused on spiritual study and the other section to be focused more on community.

The idea of an arts section isn't something that has come up, I like the idea! Thank you, it will certainly be considered.

Actually the way the forums are now, for the most part, is very well organized and succinct. I've seen some other sites go from simple cuteness to the definition of bloat-fest. Esp in regards to increasing the number of main forum divisions, social networking plugins, ads, Flash and so. Anything but ads and Flash! Everyone lately is just going over the deep end when they update things and it just wastes more bandwidth and loading time, that's something to take into consideration and avoid. Take for example films of the past 10+ years and compare them to stuff from 2, 3 decades ago, that's what I mean.

Most of the modern themes or development packages for sites/forums have become extremely process/resource heavy. Compare this to B4 and this site is so very light, so easy to load and browse through - because the browser isn't loading so much stuff into memory or constantly communicating with social networking sites. This aspect is very appealing and lends a relaxed feeling to the whole community, in comparison to many general sites or new age sites out there that I have observed, which try to cram as much stuff into the monitor space as possible. There are a few sites I know of, that have become totally unbrowsable, in how slowly things load due to the amount of things that have to be loaded each time you go back of forward.

Sub-forums are a good way of handling things, as far as the forum is concerned, but here too a balance must be kept or over-organization leads to topics becoming lost/hidden in the recesses that no one ever visits/knows what they are about/or cares.

As far as the look of Bring4th, maybe a photorealistic look with a glassy sheen would make it stand out, ie look less "dull". More green colours, more colours in general, but not like a circus.

Also, more emoticons, much, much more!

The look of L/L Research could maybe use newer fonts, some more graphics...positive abstract things. No sacred geometry type things, more a library, quiet feel.
I always liked that it felt like a very serious (research) site and definitely not a new age site, or anything kooky.
It struck just the right tone, representing very well the tone of the LoO and the rest of the Confederation material. That fact that it takes the subject matter seriously and humbly is just right!
I feel it is also very important to tackle the language thing just right, whether through flags or else, to let non-English speakers in on the action.
Also it is important to show somewhere, what kind of subjects are discussed within all the transcripts, so that people not familiar with this whole world, can maybe gather insight. Ie connecting the outside world to the LoO through the subjects discussed within.
And since there is such a wide variety of scientific and spiritual subjects discussed, it is important to list them as a showcase - and to have a search tool in order to be able to quickly reference these subjects within the transcripts for further research.

For example, over at the Cassiopaean project they've got nice glossary, that is very useful in explaining the concepts dealt in both that work as well as LoO, (since the LoO is heavily referenced) as well as in general. Now that would be a great addition to the L/L Research site, to help connect the LoO knowledge with what is being discovered on Earth, ie verification - which can only serve as further inspiration.

(07-29-2013, 11:17 AM)Parsons Wrote: I think an Arts section should be created which would better categorize posts related to poetry, music, painting/drawing, games, movies, and TV shows, etc. At the moment, they seem to be a complete scattershot all over the forums.

The idea of an arts section isn't something that has come up, I like the idea! Thank you, it will certainly be considered.

I definitely give the thumbs up to an arts forum.

there are plenty of creatives here on the forums (musically, artistically, poetically), and it would be a great place to house their 'works'.

it would sort of form a companion forum to the 'Wanderer Stories' in that these are the fruits of the Wanderers' handiwork.

Thanks for the feedback and support thus far! We’re taking in and digesting what you’ve offered. In the following post, I’ll share our plan for a global navigation menu to synthesize every element of both websites.

Parsons Wrote:Life on Planet Earth and Olio combined to make a 'General Discussion' section (perhaps with a cleverly worded description or forum section name?). My reasoning on this is that they have extremely similar functionality at the moment and I often have to go digging through both sections to find a post.

That’s not a shabby idea. “Olio” was created due to the need for a miscellaneous category. But you’re right, there is serious overlap between the two forums, and merging them into one under the name “General”, and following through with your second suggestion, might be a better way to organize.

Parsons Wrote:I think an Arts section should be created which would better categorize posts related to poetry, music, painting/drawing, games, movies, and TV shows, etc. At the moment, they seem to be a complete scattershot all over the forums.

This is genius. Preliminarily, I am for it. And so far Austin and Plenum have expressed interest.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:Actually the way the forums are now, for the most part, is very well organized and succinct. I've seen some other sites go from simple cuteness to the definition of bloat-fest. Esp in regards to increasing the number of main forum divisions, social networking plugins, ads, Flash and so. Anything but ads and Flash!

Thanks for all the great input Light of Wisdom. We hope to keep things as simplified and straightforward as possible, without attention diversions or clutter on the page.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:Also, more emoticons, much, much more!

Totally. I asked Steve about this one a while back. He said he’d be happy to install a new set of emoticons for the forums. I created a thread asking if anyone had such a set in mind, but if memory serves, I wasn’t directed to an available set. Do you have any ideas? We definitely need expressions for “I am busy watching the latest Game of Thrones”, and, “Season over. Life not worth living.”

Light of Wisdom Wrote:The look of L/L Research could maybe use newer fonts, some more graphics...positive abstract things. No sacred geometry type things, more a library, quiet feel.
I always liked that it felt like a very serious (research) site and definitely not a new age site, or anything kooky.

The look itself does need updated, but without resorting to gimmickry or taking away from the sacred aura of the material.

In the Library section specifically, we want to continue to offer the information in a clear and accessible way that doesn’t add a layer of human interference.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:It struck just the right tone, representing very well the tone of the LoO and the rest of the Confederation material. That fact that it takes the subject matter seriously and humbly is just right!

Thanks. The material is what it is – there is no attempt to hype it, inflate it, convey the notion that it’s needed, etc. It stands on its own merits. Our job in the Library is simply to present it and allow the seeker to make of it what they will.

Certainly there is some room for creative presentation, but so long as that presentation doesn’t modify the information itself or present it with an intent to sell, persuade, proselytize, glorify itself, etc.

And there is room, as well, for people to offer opinions about that material on the website, but the difference between source material and opinion should be clear.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:Also it is important to show somewhere, what kind of subjects are discussed within all the transcripts, so that people not familiar with this whole world, can maybe gather insight. Ie connecting the outside world to the LoO through the subjects discussed within.

I’m not sure how it will be realized, but we hope to topically organize the transcripts in a variety of different ways that give one greater insight into what’s actually in that treasure trove. Its current organization requires accessing year by year and reading main questions that could be the length of paragraphs. (I’m guilty in contributing to those paragraph-sized questions.) Maybe something similar to the system Plenum created for the Q’uo transcripts.

We’ll find ways to tag the sessions. And Steve plans on putting the transcripts into a database to yield search returns much like Tobey has set up at lawofone.info.

As to a glossary, which you mentioned at the end of your message, JustLikeYou is working on constructing the first ever comprehensive glossary of Law of One terms, well over 200 of them. We’ll feature it on the new site. It will rock.

With love/light,
Gary

Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but love unexplained is clearer. - Rumi

GLOBAL NAVIGATION PANEL
In merging LLResearch.org and Bring4th.org into one website, one of the biggest questions that arises concerns how best to organize and arrange the various components.

To answer that question, we are considering using a global navigation panel that will be available from every page of the new site. So far as our plans have taken us, this menu panel will consist of seven parent categories that extend left to right across the page. This is common way to create navigation for websites. When you hover the pointer over the parent category, a vertical drop-down menu appears with the child categories.

We’ve put together a rough draft version of one possible way to implement this menu, effectively unifying two websites into one.

Below is a screenshot image. I’ve also attached a Word doc to this post.

The blue-colored items are redundant in the menu.

We’d love any feedback you may have! Do you see any weaknesses or strengths in this plan? Have any alternative ideas?

SUBFOLDERS
We are aiming to arrange the site into subfolders instead of sub-domains. For instance:

Most items you see in the global navigation panel will have their own subfolder, or page. Though some subfolders may combine more than one element from the navigation panel.

Each page will be underneath both the global navigation panel and an L/L banner that stretches across the top of the page. While the navigation panel will remain the same across every page, we are thinking that the banner will vary in size according to the page. For instance, the landing page (http://www.llresearch.org) will have a full size banner, whereas the forum page (http://www.llresearch.org/forums) will have a smaller banner across the top to give more space to the forums.

Otherwise, the page won’t be competing with anything else within its own space.

OTHER GOODIES
Steve is doing a ton of research on how best to design the site in order to accommodate mobile and tablet devices.

And we’re thinking about using a system whereby, using your account, you could mark transcripts as “read” and “unread”, perhaps even starring and notating some, to make the archive a better, more personal resource.

And as mentioned in the previously post, Steve is looking to put all the transcripts

(08-04-2013, 08:19 PM)Bring4th_GLB Wrote: And we’re thinking about using a system whereby, using your account, you could mark transcripts as “read” and “unread”, perhaps even starring and notating some, to make the archive a better, more personal resource.

You may want to reconsider... I may hug the stuffing out of you next time I see you. This is the best idea I've heard since this project started.
Seriously though... A tiny bit of categorization and the ability to mark transcripts as read would open up a whole plethora of great channeled material that I think some are overlooking. Plus, those of us have read a significant amount of L/L channeled material already can keep track of what we've read... just a phenomenal idea.

Jeremy I received a notice from the Bring4th system of your original post, but upon opening this thread, it appears that the post did not make it. Perhaps another victim of the bugs produced by the new system. At any rate, thanks for whatever the post may have said.

Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but love unexplained is clearer. - Rumi

The like button would still be there for ones use but you could not see how many likes a post has, also the option to turn off "Likes Received" and "Likes Given" all individually. I have noticed a troublesome trend on my part, at times, as to not read all posts because a lack of likes. As thus I would like to have the opportunity to hide em.
Perhaps a subtle small color shape would activate on ones profile, so others can see that the (able to see likes) feature is turned off for them. I use likes for many a reason, that is why the notice so one can know that it will most likely not be seen by that person.

Also an option to hide the avatars, signatures, post count (for others and/or self, would include the stars), joined dated (for others) and titles of all. Basically if one wants they can only see the name of the poster, all features to be enabled to turn on or off individually.

Perhaps not a flashy idea but I would like to have the choice for such things .)

all extraneous material gone ... just the bare bones, the name of the poster, and their undiluted thoughts.

I arrived at such an outlay by using a chrome extension called 'Stylebot'. I'm sure its available for firefox too : d

but yeah, I found all the numbers as clutter and totally irrelevant to the quality of the thought being expressed.

I just want to see what 'you wrote' and not what others thought of it (liikes etc).

the numbers and the counting ... this is the finity of 3d mind and I said, to hell with it!!!!

<grins>

yep, jerry-rigged solution. But some of the things you are asking for like turning off the avatars and the signatures are already available through the control panel. Just find the 'edit options' setting.

Did some searching and though quite surprising, there seems to be no equal to 'Stylebot' at this time. It is recommended to use the firefox web developer tools inside the browser. This command specifically: $0.style.display=”none”
(Code source)

Seems to be the one to use to hide what one wishes. Buuut it seems complicated at first glance, after trying to figure out where I should insert this stripet of code without success thus far. I am vary of 'breaking' something because of my lack of know how.

Oh my goodness I checked "Edit your Profile" before I did the list and I somehow have skimmed the "Edit Options" until now *derp*

Another thought for an addon for the forums would be to install an auto-picture resizer so when someone posts an ENORMOUSLY high resolution picture, it doesn't stretch the webpage off to the right. I know there are mods that exist for it but sadly have no suggestion how to install it.

Totally. I asked Steve about this one a while back. He said he’d be happy to install a new set of emoticons for the forums. I created a thread asking if anyone had such a set in mind, but if memory serves, I wasn’t directed to an available set. Do you have any ideas? We definitely need expressions for “I am busy watching the latest Game of Thrones”, and, “Season over. Life not worth living.”

LOL, you know I know of a site where artists can design/draw/paint you anything, including emoticons. In most cases they'd ask for reimbursement, but it throws the possibilities wide open...but then again, paying for emoticons, man now I've seen it all...

However, over the past 7 or so years, I just so happened to collect a ginormous library of emoticons, from emotion based ones to crazy ones.
If you need this, I'm on it. Just tell me and I'll zip it up for you.

(08-04-2013, 08:13 PM)Bring4th_GLB Wrote:

Light of Wisdom Wrote:Also it is important to show somewhere, what kind of subjects are discussed within all the transcripts, so that people not familiar with this whole world, can maybe gather insight. Connecting the outside world to the LoO through the subjects discussed within.

I’m not sure how it will be realized, but we hope to topically organize the transcripts in a variety of different ways that give one greater insight into what’s actually in that treasure trove. Its current organization requires accessing year by year and reading main questions that could be the length of paragraphs. (I’m guilty in contributing to those paragraph-sized questions.) Maybe something similar to the system Plenum created for the Q’uo transcripts.

We’ll find ways to tag the sessions. And Steve plans on putting the transcripts into a database to yield search returns much like Tobey has set up at lawofone.info.

The "lawofone.info" method sounds about right. Search-ability/accessibility, so important nowadays.

As far as showing the various fields of research with the LoO, I'm thinking maybe to have a succinct introductory page that clearly defines the areas of contribution (and thus subsequently investigation on our part), in both spiritual and scientific realms (ie consciousness/intelligent energy fields on one side and material realms on the other, a brief mention to their interconnectedness.)
It'd be most useful in this intro to connect to the new glossary, the forums & the L/L R site.

The whole purpose of what I have in mind here, is for any person completely unfamiliar with the Law of One to quickly be introduced to the value of the material.

For someone who has never before heard of the LoO or say even the whole new age scene, coming onto a site such as "lawofone.info" or L/L, it's just this huge text of nothing, like coming to a wall keeping out potential students. And a proper, well written, intro would also avoid the knee-jerk "this is satanic material" reaction that some people can experience when first encountering it. In other words pointing out the contributions on all fronts, from humanistic to spiritual, to scientific, and placing them in a context.

It should be accessible and friendly to anyone, whether a person coming from a religious, a new age or materialist scientific background, anyone researching to gain knowledge.
And, let's not forget the power of the internet search engines and their ability to introduce people to new understanding.

Lastly, there is this other issue, that is of some importance. As it will most definitely be asked - the more popular something becomes, the more it becomes open to attack. The nature of channeling itself and of the quality of the material received.

I think Wilcock's intro to the material says it best:

Quote:It was at the end of this twenty-year period that Elkins’ work with Carla Rueckert, a very successful channel, broke through to a much more substantial level.

This breakthrough was directly precipitated by the arrival of Jim McCarty, who thought that he was coming to help Don and Carla catalog, categorize and organize the volumes of material that they had already produced. Instead, something totally unexpected happened.

They attracted a true heavy-hitter of the higher realms, perhaps the main group responsible for our care: a huge spiritual group of entities that had apparently fused themselves into one single mind that called itself Ra, and said that they were from the sixth dimension, millions of years more advanced than modern humanity.

The words and concepts were highly sophisticated and precise, unlike any other type of channeled material ever seen, and were referred to by one professor as "akin to a Ph.D. dissertation on epistemology."

As soon as Ra began speaking, they made it clear that this was the first time that they had been able to get through a fairly undistorted series of messages in thousands of years of human history.

Carla was brought to the complete unconscious state and taken out of her body for the Ra contact to occur, and had no knowledge whatsoever of what had occurred while she was away.

This contact occurred in 1981, well before the field of channeling had reached such a huge surge of rather repetitive, simplistic and contradictory information that is often seen on the Internet and in certain magazines and books today.

For whatever reason, the work has never become very well-known, but this certainly is no fault of the material itself. The quality and gravity of the information that Ra presents is unlike any other that this author has ever seen.

I think it would be wise to go into this in a separate page, to differentiate the forms of channeling and of channels. LOO material is quite different from most and it would be useful to describe the particular circumstances under which the channeling took place as well as the more rigorous, scientific approach of it. I know that the guys at the Cass site - they too have done this and they make mention that only very few sources are clean enough to be useable in serious inquiry, due to the methods, the people involved and of course the deliberate interference from higher sources, to point out that deliberate interference by STS has occured in an overwhelming number of cases. Basically to point why it is important to be aware of all possibilities and polarities.
To notify that many of these precautions are not taken to heart and practiced by most channels.
That there must be a way to define useful and useless material. That there must be a way for 3rd density beings to make an observation between that which is of a helpful nature and that which is a deliberate distraction/disinformation.
And lastly to point out the importance of preservation of free will, by encouraging all to pursue their own answers, to explore and experiment, to find that which has never been seen and experienced before, to define their own path and gather their own wisdom.

If one can leave these intro pages feeling uplifted, empowered and with a huge zest for life, I think that we would have done that which is in our own nature. A great service to all and to the material no in our care.

Important to provide the impetus, that the LoO material is merely the springboard for our own exploration and understanding of it, as individuals, as a community and as a future social memory complex.

Quote:As to a glossary, which you mentioned at the end of your message, JustLikeYou is working on constructing the first ever comprehensive glossary of Law of One terms, well over 200 of them. We’ll feature it on the new site. It will rock.

The campaign to raise funds for the website project needs some love! Our fundraising goal for this project is $3,000 and as of August 20th, we have only reached 31% of the goal.

The unification of the two websites is a massive undertaking, these funds only covering a minimum of our webmaster’s time and expenses.

Can you help us reach our goal to create a better website for community members and readers of the L/L material? Any donation amount is deeply appreciated. Keep in mind that your donation to help this cause is 100% tax deductible for the 2013 tax year.

This is a direct link to the dedicated donation page for this project. Thank you for your consideration!

(08-14-2013, 12:38 AM)Parsons Wrote: Another thought for an addon for the forums would be to install an auto-picture resizer so when someone posts an ENORMOUSLY high resolution picture, it doesn't stretch the webpage off to the right. I know there are mods that exist for it but sadly have no suggestion how to install it.

Ah, a good one for Steve, as this goes far beyond the limits of my own limited understanding. Will make note of it. Thanks Parson!

Light of Wisdom Wrote:However, over the past 7 or so years, I just so happened to collect a ginormous library of emoticons, from emotion based ones to crazy ones.
If you need this, I'm on it. Just tell me and I'll zip it up for you.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:The "lawofone.info" method sounds about right. Search-ability/accessibility, so important nowadays.

As far as showing the various fields of research with the LoO, I'm thinking maybe to have a succinct introductory …

It'd be most useful in this intro to connect to the new glossary, the forums & the L/L R site.

The whole purpose of what I have in mind here, is for any person completely unfamiliar with the Law of One to quickly be introduced to the value of the material.

For someone who has never before heard of the LoO or say even the whole new age scene, coming onto a site such as "lawofone.info" or L/L, it's just this huge text of nothing, like coming to a wall keeping out potential students. And a proper, well written, intro would also avoid the knee-jerk "this is satanic material" reaction that some people can experience when first encountering it. In other words pointing out the contributions on all fronts, from humanistic to spiritual, to scientific, and placing them in a context.

I agree with you that for the person new to either website, it can be daunting and perhaps dizzying to attempt to take it all in. Some initial orientation would be helpful.

Supporting that particular objective will be new (or improved) sections like:

--Mission Statement.
--About Us – History
--Who We Are (Staff/Volunteers)

However, even with the most careful explanation, highlights of the positive nature of the philosophy, connections to existing terrestrial wisdom traditions, and all manner of disclaimer, this material will not appeal to a broad demographic, and will be rejected out-of-hand. We can certainly work to reduce that possibility, but not eliminate it.

Good God. That sounds interesting, but let's set a deadline of sometime north of the year 2025 for that particular project's completion. : )

Light of Wisdom Wrote:Lastly, there is this other issue, that is of some importance. As it will most definitely be asked - the more popular something becomes, the more it becomes open to attack. The nature of channeling itself and of the quality of the material received.

That's a concern in the back of my own mind. Thus far we've been extremely fortunate in receiving very little directed hate owing to how far removed we are from the public radar. As we inch closer to the main highways and byways of intellectual commerce, we may attract more negative attention. Though I think given the limited appeal of this information, we will always be significantly off the beaten path.

Unless of course Disclosure happens, in which case, welcome to a whole new ballgame with entirely new rules, including a paradigm potentially more supportive of this sort of information.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:David Wilcock: For whatever reason, the work has never become very well-known, but this certainly is no fault of the material itself. The quality and gravity of the information that Ra presents is unlike any other that this author has ever seen.

That was a really nice write-up from David. Thank you for sharing this.

About the question posed in his final thought quoted above: why has this information remained so unknown and obscure? I have a certain pattern of thought in this regard, though by no means authoritative.

I believe that there is one primary reason for this, and three contributing reasons:

(1) First and foremost, the material will, for the most part, appeal only to the wanderer.

Wanderers made up 1% of the total planetary population in 1981, a figure which *may* have increased since then, but by negligible proportion I would guess. And while even 1% represents tens of millions of people, over 90% of that number were unaware of their soul's non-planetary origins according to Ra's estimation in 1981.

36.24 "Questioner: … can you tell me what percentage of the Wanderers on Earth today have been successful in penetrating the memory block and becoming aware who they are…?

Ra: I am Ra. We can approximate the percentage of those penetrating intelligently their status. This is between eight and one-half and nine and three-quarters percent. There is a larger percentile group of those who have a fairly well defined, shall we say, symptomology indicating to them that they are not of this, shall we say, “insanity.” This amounts to a bit over fifty percent of the remainder. Nearly one-third of the remainder are aware that something about them is different, so you see there are many gradations of awakening to the knowledge of being a Wanderer. We may add that it is to the middle and first of these groups that this information will, shall we say, make sense."

Here is a breakdown of those four groups (the fourth group only implied in the Q&A above) in Ra's analysis of wanderers who have been successful in penetrating the memory block and becoming aware of who they are:

9.75%-----Awakened to wanderer identity (max percentage)
45%--------Feeling not of this "insanity" (50% of the *remainder*)
30%--------Feeling something is different about the self (One-third of the remainder)
15.25%----Totally, completely asleep at the wheel (the unnamed percentage)

Ra adds that, "it is to the middle and first of these groups that this information will, shall we say, make sense."

Meaning that upwards of only 54.75% of all wanderers in 1981 would feel that the Law of One material made "sense". Meaning that roughly only 32.9 million people on Earth could even understand this information on a level that affirms its legitimacy.

As most of you can probably attest was more or less true in your case, my own experience with the Law of One was one of instant recognition and a generation of familiarity and knowing that, to this day, cannot be argued to the contrary. Was it that this information could be empirically verified and proven in the objective realm of scientific-materialistic understanding? Or was it that I am a wanderer, and this information thusly made "sense" to me, speaking as it does of a cosmos native to my soul's experience, one radically different from Earth's reigning paradigm? I think the latter.

To one approaching this information strictly from a standpoint of a scientific-materialistic perspective without benefit of the experience of higher-density, non-veiled experience, the stumbling blocks would be legion. Though it's nevertheless possible that this information would make sense to the native who has opened their mind and heart to infinite possibility and the aliveness of all things.

(2) To the first reason I would add this and the following two contributing reasons.

The material is abstruse, esoteric, and dense. It's style is technical, unemotional, and neutral, aiming more for precision than prose of an inspirational or poetic quality. (Though it's certainly not without inspiration and poetic eloquence.) And it's path is meandering as the questioner explores myriad avenues of not necessarily connected, or sequenced, investigation.

In other words, with it's left-brained flavor, it's not all that easy to understand.

(3) The Law of One material has received little promotion. Not by the publisher, not by L/L Research. Likewise with the larger L/L Research Library. The Law of One's most visible proponent thus far has been DW, one of the main doors through which people reach the material. Otherwise it sits miles off the main road, ever available, but ever outside the periphery of the collective's field of perception.

It is often, then, that those who do find the information are lead to it – as many, myself included, profess is the case – through a series of synchronicity, sometimes of a startlingly bizarre nature.

(4) In my opinion, the Confederation philosophy, at the center of which sits the Law of One material, represents a positively polarized perspective that is of a rather pure order in the spectrum of polarity, especially relative to the intractable situation of mixed orientation on this planet: mixed people, mixed thought patterns, mixed actions, and resulting mixed religions and philosophies, i.e., Ra's "sinkhole of indifference".

There is a gravity to that collective field of mixed polarity wherein the vast majority of people have not made their choice. The center of that gravity is light years from the perspective offered in the Law of One.

This body of philosophy, therefore, is not particularly, shall we say, desired by the great multitudes who prefer the comforts and distractions and misplaced responsibility of sleep.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:I think it would be wise to go into this in a separate page, to differentiate the forms of channeling and of channels. LOO material is quite different from most and it would be useful to describe the particular circumstances under which the channeling took place as well as the more rigorous, scientific approach of it. I know that the guys at the Cass site - they too have done this and they make mention that only very few sources are clean enough to be useable in serious inquiry, due to the methods, the people involved and of course the deliberate interference from higher sources, to point out that deliberate interference by STS has occured in an overwhelming number of cases. Basically to point why it is important to be aware of all possibilities and polarities.

To an extent we can do this, but we have to be careful not to move too far into the realm of tooting our own horn. The criteria for discerning positive vs. negative vs. mixed channeled information has been stated many times over the years on Carla and Jim's part. So too with the proper protocols for establishing and sustaining a safe and positively oriented contact.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:That there must be a way to define useful and useless material.

Who makes that judgment call for others, though? What is the ultimate, universal standard that applies equally to all people irrespective of their depth of understanding and their position along the evolutionary timeline?

In other words, what is useful to one is useless to another.

Personally I think the Law of One is among the most useful information ever to emerge on this planet, but most would find it utterly useless.

Thus one can only encourage the seeker's own discernment, lest one become imbalanced in the direction of learn/teaching for the other, subverting the sacred exercise of the other self's right to determine their own truth.

Light of Wisdom Wrote:And lastly to point out the importance of preservation of free will, by encouraging all to pursue their own answers, to explore and experiment, to find that which has never been seen and experienced before, to define their own path and gather their own wisdom.

We're on the same page. : )

Light of Wisdom Wrote:If one can leave these intro pages feeling uplifted, empowered and with a huge zest for life, I think that we would have done that which is in our own nature. A great service to all and to the material no in our care.

That's the hope, at least!

Light of Wisdom Wrote:Important to provide the impetus, that the LoO material is merely the springboard for our own exploration and understanding of it, as individuals, as a community and as a future social memory complex.

This is an aspect of the core ethos of L/L Research, echoed in every disclaimer with wich Q'uo prefaces each channeling. All at L/L Research, beginning with and including Carla Rueckert and Jim McCarty, seek to emphasize that the ultimate power and authority reside within the seeker, not within the information.

With love/light,
Gary

Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but love unexplained is clearer. - Rumi